The LA Times says that households now spend an average of 84 hours a month on the Xbox Live online service. Of that time, a little over half is devoted to entertainment options other than games. They say the average household spends 150 hours a month watching television so Xbox still has ground to cover but the strides they’ve made are huge.

Execs say that being an all-in-one entertainment portal was always the end goal. Now, technology advances and Hollywood’s new found interest in digital presentation has helped them make it so.

A few days ago, Xbox announced three major apps for their system. Xfinity, HBOGo and MLB.TV.

Xfinity allows Comcast cable customers to choose from a large library of on-demand movies and they can all be accessed by waving your hand — thanks to Kinect.

MLB.TV brings a whole new way to watch baseball with voice controls, the ability to rewind live games and watch multiple games at one time.

HBOGo delivers all of HBO’s outstanding series and movies completely on demand.

Xbox’s success in this area is proof that we’re past the stage of individual use devices. Think about it. Fifteen years ago, it was all about the ice cream maker, the panini maker, the rice cooker. Or in the case of entertainment, the CD player, the VCR and the TV.

Pull out the iPad and you can listen to music, watch streaming movie and even surf the web — all with one, handheld device.

How does this figure into marketing? I’ll tell you how. Consumers want it all, when they want it and all in one place. The closer you can get to that, the more they’ll remember your name.

Think movie theater app that delivers showtimes, allows you to buy your tickets on your phone and offers discounts on the popcorn. Add in instant downloads for the movie soundtrack or links to similar movies on Netflix and you go from good to golden.

It’s all about defining how your customers move through your business. Would online reservations cut down wait times? Would auto shipping prevent B2B customers from running out of paper? Figure out what your customers need and package it with something they didn’t even know they wanted.

Xbox buyers didn’t pick up the unit thinking, wow, if only I could get HBO on this thing. But now that they have it, they might not trade that unit in on a Playstation come Christmas.